What's in a "foot"? (Surveying)

[Wagtail]

True, that was why it was done that way so that the astronauts would "feel right at home". Couldn't have a descent rate in meters per second now could we?

I'll just leave this here... (mind you, it doesn't show the difference between 'International Foot' and 'US Foot', just 'Foot')

 

[fried1765]

Yeah. You mean like Commercial Jetliners running out of fuel over metric/imperial confusion. Happened!

Like the "Gimli glider"?

 

[Jstpssng]

Like the "Gimli glider"?

I had to search for that one. That's one tale which could have ended differently if a computer had been at the helm.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I recall some years back, Boeing released a new plane, the first using metric units. Its first flight was from Canada, and they got the units mixed up when they filled the fuel tanks. It ran out of fuel very early, and it lit on an abandoned air field some where in the U.S. The Pilot made a dead stick landing on the runway in the middle of a car show. There was a movie about the incident. Anyone remember this? Was a great movie!

Whoops! Sorry; I posted before I read the last page!

 

[Streetcar]

The Feds tried to go metric with construction contract documents, bot full metric and merticised (my coined word) US foot. Both failed. I know a lot of contractors either did not bid or added a lot of money for the ripple effect especially with job site mistakes. We had to check and double check every measurement, US manufacturers do not produce stuff for domestic metric products.

Two years later it was dropped.

Ron

structureswere designed in imperial units then converted to metric for plans. During construction metric plans were converted to imperial for building. Had an electrical contractor think he was bidding imperial quantum痴 when plans were metric. Lost big money

 

[CobyRupert]

I'll just leave this here... (mind you, it doesn't show the difference between 'International Foot' and 'US Foot', just 'Foot')

Yep, that much superior to metric!
(sarcasm)

 

[goeduck]

Lets get down to brass tacks on subjects that MATTER MOST when it comes to metric or not...... bra cup size. Do we have to relearn womens cup sizes if we go metric? :shocked:

 

[mapper]

The Feds tried to go metric with construction contract documents, bot full metric and merticised (my coined word) US foot. Both failed. I know a lot of contractors either did not bid or added a lot of money for the ripple effect especially with job site mistakes. We had to check and double check every measurement, US manufacturers do not produce stuff for domestic metric products.

Two years later it was dropped.

Ron

At that time WSDOT also went metric to comply with federal regulations. It was no big deal as our survey work is done in metric and converted to feet anyway. The major amount of work was in converting standards to metric and some small adjustments were made to things such as lane widths to make for numbers that made sense. The construction companies then converted the metric plans back to feet and did a lot of complaining as well (to Congress for example). It was as Ron noted, then changed back.
We also discovered at that time that the CAD software we used defaulted to international feet and needed to be reset for US Survey Foot. Another notable thing about the survey foot is the metric representation actually has an infinite number of places to the right of the decimal point, kinda like pi. Made converting high accuracy design base maps really really fun.
The design work on the I5 Columbia River bridge between Washington and Oregon was not much of an issue because we sat down with them and determined what units would be used before the work started. Our survey and mapping counterparts in Oregon were a great group to work with and I really enjoyed doing so.

 

[RobS]

A couple of metric stories and fair warning, I am an engineer...

When the metric system first came to the auto industry it was what I would call "soft". Things still pretty much designed in feet/inches and converted to metric. Sometime after that it did become "hard", where things were actually designed in metric units. So instead of a bore being 25.4mm, it was 25mm. This is also when we all began to lose our 10mm sockets:laughing: I do recall working with a machine shop on a piece that was properly designed in hard metric units. The first thing the shop did was convert every dimension on the print to inches. They then made the part using inch tools and prepared the layout using inch measurements and finally converted all of those measurements back to metric. This sort of practice went on for years, if not decades but is largely gone now.

I have understood metric units for my whole career but only recently have become "fluent". It's pretty easy to draw a 15mm long line, drill a 30mm hole or measure a 5mm slot but a lot harder to comprehend everyday things. When I'm not engineering, I enjoy cycling and the world of cycling is centered in Europe. Over the past couple of years, I have successfully converted myself to "real world" metric for speed, distance, vertical climb and now temperature. I no longer have to do the mental conversions, I know what 30kph feels like or how far 50km is. Temperature has been the hardest as it's tough to estimate in any units by simple sticking your hand out the window. Weight and mass are next for me, I still find myself converting in my head.

I was never good with foreign languages so this is now my bi-lingual journey. Anything to keep learning, right

 

[CobyRupert]

"How many engineers does it take to change a 205 Btu/hr light bulb?"

Sometimes people don't even know they're using metric.

Everybody easily understands that their 120V light bulb drawing .5 amps (at 1.0 power factor) = 60 Watts. (....maybe if we were truly metric the outlet would be 100 Volts?)
and if bulb runs for 100 hours we owe the electric company for (6000 Watt-hours or) 6 kilowatt-hours.

When the bulb burns out nobody in America says: "Anybody got a 205 Btu/hr or a .08 horsepower bulb replacement?"
and we don't get a bill from the electric company for those 100 hours saying we owe for 15,930,000 foot pounds (or 20,472 BTU's or .204 Therms).